Kazakh trade delegation visits Washington, DC

11:05, 6 May 2010

WASHINGTON. May 6. KAZINFORM Kazakh delegation led by Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade Timur Suleimenov visited Washington, DC on April 26-29, 2010 to hold bilateral consultations with the Office of the United States Trade Representative on Kazakhstan's accession to the World Trade Organization; Kazinform has learnt from the Kazakh Embassy to the USA.

In his opening remarks Mr. Suleimenov reassured his American counterparts that the WTO accession has always been a top foreign policy priority for Kazakhstan.

United States has welcomed Kazakhstan's progress in bringing its legislation in compliance with the WTO rules and supported its continuous trade liberalization process.

In particular, negotiations on such issues as sanitary and phytosanitary measures, intellectual property rights and veterinary certificates are at the stage of completion.

In the course of the visit Kazakhstan and the United States have developed an action plan for 2010-2011 on the completion of bilateral WTO negotiations.

Kazakhstan will continue with its individual accession. However, member states of the Customs Union that includes Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus have agreed to coordinate among themselves on the issues related to import tariffs and work together with their multilateral partners in Geneva on bringing the Customs Union legislation in compliance with WTO standards.

It has also been confirmed that Kazakhstan will maintain its investment preferences regime for more than 400 commodities sensitive for the national economy within the framework of the Customs Union, which means that respective import duties will remain as low as 0-5%.

Diplomacy News Foreign Mass Media about Kazakhstan Economy